Police patrols have four feet on the ground

The tall man in the padded suit scowled in his direction.

Kobi stood alertly in the grass, staring straight ahead as the man continued to taunt him.

There was no question about it: This aggressive human was extremely dangerous and needed to be apprehended immediately.

Without hesitation, Kobi leaped up and sank his teeth into the suspect. The man howled in pain, music to Kobi’s ears.

That high-pitched yelp meant the brave German shepherd had saved the day. For the third time that afternoon, that is.

On a breezy and sunny Wednesday, 18-month-old Kobi was undergoing his weekly outdoor training to be a police dog for Olathe’s K-9 unit.

The man in the puffy suit was not a dangerous criminal, but an Olathe police officer volunteering to be a decoy for the training session. He wasn’t really injured, thanks to his padding.

But that pretense is vital to the dog’s education.

“A felon in real life won’t stand still when a dog bites, so the decoys have to pretend to be in pain,” said Kyle Clausius, Olathe’s K-9 unit trainer. “There’s an art to decoying, you have to be animated, so the dog thinks they’re winning the fight. It requires a lot of acting, kind of like being a stunt double for a movie.”

Despite the risk of injury, the padded decoys have fun helping to train the K-9 recruits.

To entice the dog to apprehend them, the fake suspects make mean faces and emit strange, aggressive noises. They raise their arms up to be big and scary. When the dog finally apprehends them, they try to wrestle the dog off, as any suspect would.

One of the newest decoys, Officer Kristen Cervantes volunteers to take bites from Kobi, because she’s fascinated with the dog training process. She hopes to be a K-9 officer herself one day.

“I was nervous my first time because it’s not the safest thing in the world,” she said. “But from that moment on, I’ve never felt like I was in danger. The officers have a good rapport with the dog and you can see the obedience.”

Officers in the K-9 unit agree Kobi has been a great dog to train.

“Kobi is a smart, level-headed dog,” said Matthew Fletcher, a K-9 officer who will be Kobi’s new partner on the field. “He has a positive attitude and a willingness to work.”

It was those qualities that drew officers to pick him out of nearly a dozen other dogs up for sale at Shallow Creek Kennels in northwestern Pennsylvania.

When choosing police dogs, they look for ones which are energetic and driven, said Courtney Giron, sergeant of the K-9 unit.

“We’re looking for the kind of dog who always wants to chase that ball,” he emphasized.

Despite being an inexperienced pup straight from Germany, Kobi displayed potential to officers, leading them to bring him on board.

They’re hoping he will be certified through the North American Police Work Dog Association within the next month, allowing him to officially join the K-9 team, which includes four other police dogs.

During his training for the past several weeks, apprehending dangerous suspects hasn’t been the only skill Kobi has mastered.

He’s also being educated in obedience, tracking human odor and ground disturbance and identifying odors, such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin and meth.

Typically, the police dogs will train for those skills in various locations, including abandoned buildings. Fortunately, many local businesses open their doors after hours to allow training on a real site.

“We want to expose the dog to every type of environment, so he won’t be surprised when he’s out on the job,” said Clausius. “We want to make training as realistic as possible.”

Being able to hone those tracking skills in a variety of settings is essential for the safety reasons.

“It’s like a game of hide and seek and I have a tool that will find you faster than anything,” Clausius said. “A dog can detect a suspect up to 30 and 40 feet away, sometimes more, depending on wind condition. It can prevent an officer from being ambushed.”

He pointed out that it’s important the public realize police dogs aren’t “attack” dogs.

“If a suspect fights back, the dog will bite him,” he said. “But we give significant warnings before we send in the dogs. And we only do it for violent felons or suspects in high-risk felony crimes.”

Most police dogs, however, spend their entire career with only one or two bites to their name. If that.

For the most part, it’s because they don’t have to bite, Clausius said. Most suspects would rather surrender than have sharp fangs dig into their body.

Police dogs are also social, friendly creatures, he pointed out.

It’s common for K-9 officers to give presentations with the dogs at Boy Scout meetings or elementary schools.

After work, police dogs go home with their partners, becoming an intricate part of the officer’s family.

“As a police officer, you can go home and put your gun away and leave it there,” said Clausius. “But when your partner is a dog, you go home and he just stares up at you, like, ‘Okay, where’s my food now?’”

When the dog retires, he becomes a house pet for his partner.

Being a K-9 officer is an around-the-clock job, but it’s worth every second, Clausius said.

And Kobi’s new partner can’t wait to get started on that journey.

“I’m excited about the companionship, of helping people out together,” Fletcher said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

This story was originally published April 25, 2015 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Police patrols have four feet on the ground."